5 History / Military eBooks

Sicily 1943: The Debut of Allied Joint Operations (Osprey Campaign 251)
Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD by Peter Brown
Coffin Ship: Wreck of the Brig St. John By William Henry
Nirmal Dass, "The Deeds of the Franks and Other Jerusalem-Bound Pilgrims: The Earliest Chronicle of the First Crusades"
Ian McPhedran, "The Amazing SAS: the Inside Story of Australia's Special Forces"

Sicily 1943: The Debut of Allied Joint Operations (Osprey Campaign 251)
Osprey Publishing | 2013 | ISBN: 178096126X | English | 98 Pages | PDF (e-book) | 9 MB
Not only did the Sicily operation represent a watershed in tactical development of combined arms tactics, it was also an important test for future Allied joint operations. Senior British commanders left the North African theater with a jaundiced and dismissive view of the combat capabilities of the inexperienced US Army after the debacle at Kasserine Pass in Tunisia in February 1943. Sicily was a demonstration that the US Army had rapidly learned its lessons and was now capable of fighting as a co-equal of the British Army. The Sicily campaign contained a measure of high drama as Patton took the reins of the Seventh US Army and bent the rules of the theater commander in a bold race to take Palermo on the northern Sicilian coast. When stiff German resistance halted Montgomery’s main assault to Messina through the mountains, Patton was posed to be the first to reach the key Sicilian port and end the campaign. The Sicily campaign contains a fair amount of controversy as well including the disastrous problems with early airborne assaults and the Allied failure to seal the straits of Messina, allowing the Germans to withdraw many of their best forces.

Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD by Peter Brown
English | ISBN: 069115290X | 2012 | EPUB | 806 pages | 4 MB
Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity.
Peter Brown examines the rise of the church through the lens of money and the challenges it posed to an institution that espoused the virtue of poverty and called avarice the root of all evil. Drawing on the writings of major Christian thinkers such as Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Brown examines the controversies and changing attitudes toward money caused by the influx of new wealth into church coffers, and describes the spectacular acts of divestment by rich donors and their growing influence in an empire beset with crisis. He shows how the use of wealth for the care of the poor competed with older forms of philanthropy deeply rooted in the Roman world, and sheds light on the ordinary people who gave away their money in hopes of treasure in heaven.
Through the Eye of a Needle challenges the widely held notion that Christianity's growing wealth sapped Rome of its ability to resist the barbarian invasions, and offers a fresh perspective on the social history of the church in late antiquity.

Coffin Ship: Wreck of the Brig St. John By William Henry
2009 | 224 Pages | ISBN: 1856356310 | EPUB | 3 MB
The famine drove huge numbers of Irish men and women to leave the island and pursue their survival in foreign lands. In 1847, some 200,000 people sailed for Boston alone. Of this massive group, 2,000 never made it to their destination, killed by disease and hunger during the voyages, their remains consigned to a watery grave. The sinking of the brig St. John off the coast of Massachusetts in October 1849, was only one of many tragic events to occur during this mass exodus. The ship had sailed from Galway, loaded with passengers so desperate to escape the effects of famine that some had walked from as far afield as Clare to reach the ship.

Nirmal Dass, "The Deeds of the Franks and Other Jerusalem-Bound Pilgrims: The Earliest Chronicle of the First Crusades"
2011 | ISBN-10: 1442204974, 1442204982 | PDF | 176 pages | 4 MB
This new translation offers a faithful yet accessible English-language rendering of the twelfth-century Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolomitanorum, the earliest known Latin account of the First Crusade. Although an anonymous work, it has become the exemplar for all later histories and retellings of the First Crusade. As such, it is filled with vivid descriptions of the hardships suffered by the crusaders, with deeds of personal heroism, with courtly intrigues, with betrayal and cowardice, and with a relentless faith that would see the attainment of the desired goal: the capture of Jerusalem by the crusaders in 1095. There is a great deal of mystery surrounding this anonymous account, especially in regard to its authorship; place, date, and purpose of composition; narrative methodology; and point of view. It is also a sweeping tale that swiftly moves from the first preaching of the crusade by Pope Urban II, to the ragtag and ultimately doomed effort of the popular People's Crusade, and then the more disciplined and concerted campaign by the French and Norman nobility that led to the conquest of the Holy Land by the crusaders.
Based on the latest scholarly research, including a substantive introduction that explores the questions surrounding the Gesta and its historical context, this definitive translation will bring the First Crusade and its era to life for all readers.

Ian McPhedran, "The Amazing SAS: the Inside Story of Australia's Special Forces"
ISBN: 073227981X | 2010 | EPUB/MOBI | 320 pages | 802 KB/836 KB
For the soldiers and officers of Australia's Special Air Service (SAS) Regiment, this is not just their professional motto, but a creed that shapes their lives. The SAS is among the world?s most respected special forces units, a crack team of men from the Australian Defence Force who can be relied upon to handle the most difficult, strategically sensitive and dangerous of military tasks.
Now THE AMAZING SAS provides a thrilling insight into the way this country?s SAS soldiers are selected and trained, and reveals fascinating details about recent SAS deployments: East Timor, the 2000 Olympic games, the Tampa, the Afghanistan sampaign and the regiment?s action-packed mission in Iraq.
THE AMAZING SAS draws on interviews with General Peter Cosgrove, Prime Minister John Howard, Chief of Army Lieutenant General Peter Leahy, former SAS commanding officers Gus Gilmore and Tim McOwan, and many SAS soldiers and officers.